The first step to self-knowledge is rejection of the familiar.

Knowledge, by definition, is the education of the mind that helps one in performing life functions. Some things are familiar to an individual depending on his upbringing, but, the primary life goal of many people is to attain self-knowledge. The prompt suggests that for a person to attain self-knowledge, the first step is to reject the knowledge already familiar to him. I partially agree with this recommendation, as it holds true in certain cirumstances and does not hold true in other.

To begin, religion is one of things of utmost importance, but unfortunately, people follow religions that their families have been following- the only religion that they are familiar with. How often do you see people considering all religions, its merits and demerits, and only then, choosing the one he likes tha most? Not many. For example, India has hundreds of religions and the constitution provides every individual the right to choose his religion. Amya Lalawat, who was born in a Hindu family, did not blindly follow Hinduism. He attained self knowledge by studying more than 10 religions only after rejection of his Hinduism's knowledge, and this helped him to not choose sides in the ongoing civil wars in around 1980s. He helped stop the riots going on and thereby, saving lives of many people irrespective of their religions. Had he chosen to defend Hinduism, the riots could have gone on for much longer, resulting in deaths of many more people.

Furthermore, history provides us with a lot of knowledge which is perhaps not consistent in all parts of the world. In this case, the recommendation would hold true and provide us with an advantageous first step. For instance, India was partitioned in 1947 after ending the British Raj and there were now two entities- India and Pakistan. Since then, many wars have taken place like the war in kasmir in 1960, the kargil conflict of 1971 and many more. All these battles have had specific outcomes which are differently defined in both countries. Books in India claim that India won all these wars and Pakistan, of course, claims the opposite, So to attain self-knowledge in this matter, an Indian, for example should leave aside all his previous knowledge and prejudices if he has to know who actually won these battles and what exactly happended. Therefore, in this situation, perhaps getting rid of familiar knowledge what he has been taught all his life, would be an advantageous first step in attainment of self-knowledge.

Finally, some people may argue that if a person is diving deep into a subject, he should not reject knowledge of the subjects related to those. For example, if a person wants to do an MBA in finance, and he has already completed his course in CFA, then the knowledge of finance previously learned would be beneficial to him while doing his masters. In fact, many subjects in the course of MBA in finance overlap with the subjects in CFA and could help in overall development of the individual. Thus, in the situation, the recommendation suggested by the prompt would not be as advantageous as in the above mentioned ones.

In conclusion, attainment of self-knowledge should be the primary goal of an individual and in the process he should reject the knowledge familiar to him, if possible, in certain circumstances. This might not be true in some cases, like doing, but it can be a very advantageous first step in many.